Meet the world’s No. 1 truck driver, Santa Claus

Dec 22, 2010

So now we know. As the industry has gone through all kinds of regulations that have changed the industry for better or for worse, the most famous “truck driver” has seen his job change very little through the years. It turns out we could probably learn a thing or two from the world’s No. 1 truck driver – Santa Claus.

Yes, that’s right, the Big Jolly Old Elf himself was the world’s first, and certainly it’s most famous, truck driver. So says Driver Solutions.

Driver Solutions specializes in CDL training. The company, thanks to the work of multimedia content producer Kylee Wall, has created an alternative story to the Christmas classic “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

"Twas the Night Before Christmas – Trucker’s Edition” compares Santa to the life of a truck driver, and remarkably, they are quite the same. The video, and accompanying rewrite of the classic tale, has a truck driver meeting Santa at a truck stop during a snowstorm and sharing notes on their jobs.

“Yes, Santa Claus steers eight grass-chomping reindeer instead of a diesel-powered eighteen-wheeler, and he’s seated in a sleigh, not a cab,” said Wall. “But what he does is strikingly similar to a professional truck driver.

Both Santa and today’s truck drivers are responsible for delivering packages on time. Both have to work no matter the weather. And both use modern tracking devices.

“What Santa accomplishes one night a year, professional truck drivers do daily at all hours of the day and night,” Wall added. “So, as you walk into the mall to pick up that one last special gift, be thankful for the professional truck driver who brought it there.”

(If you’d like to follow Santa on his path on Friday night, you can visit USA.gov’s Santa Claus Tracker)

So what’s the big difference between a modern-day truck driver and Santa, who has been delivering packages for generations?

Well, Santa doesn’t have to worry about hours-of-service regulations. He does all his work in one night and then has 364 days to rest. And he doesn’t have to be concerned with emissions regulations – his power source, reindeer, as I understand it, produce very little in terms of toxic chemicals.

So he has to make all his deliveries in one night so as not to leave a single child unhappy. The time off is well worth the effort.